NewYearsDayProject | a song a day blog

I've had more insomnia at the beginning of the week than at the end of the week. I hope that tonight's not one of those nights. Insomnia at the beginning of the week sets me up for a hard week and a short temper with my students. With today's song, Sam Smith , " How Do You Sleep? " I wanted to bring my songs of insomnia to my Apple Music playlist--the playlist I'm actually more likely to load while I'm lying in bed. Hopefully these songs will cradle you back to sleep.

While the rock music was falling out of favor in the 2010s,   All Time Low 's career continued to gain momentum. Formed in 2003 and heavily influenced by   NoFx   and   Blink -182   the band became a force in the emo phase of the   Warped Tour   scene. The band became famous for their jocular onstage banter and their mock-turned serious feud with   Metro Station . And in that jocular nature, the skinny, nerdy bandmates clad in only their   tighty-whities   appeared on MySpace's home page the week before their sophomore album   So Wrong, It's Right  dropped in 2007. I DON'T MIND IF YOU FUCK UP (RUIN) MY LIFE.  Fast forward thirteen years. I have deleted a lot of music I acquired in college if I didn't like the songs. I enjoyed laughing at  Blink- 182 videos  in middle and high school just as much as any white boy, but joke pop-punk got old when emo bands dug into deeper subjects. It turns out that All Time Low was digging a bit deeper in the 2010s, flying under my ra

In 1986, Australian/New Zealand band Crowded House released their debut eponymous album. By April the next year, the band had a number 2 Hot 100 single, “ Don’t Dream It’s Over .” The band is best known for this song, though they had several other hits in the U.S., the U.K., and their homelands of Australia and New Zealand. I knew the song from its 2003 cover by Sixpence None the Richer which was played both on Adult Contemporary radio and Christian stations, and didn’t know that it was a cover until my dad said it was originally by an ‘80s band.  TRY TO CATCH A DELUGE IN A PAPER CUP. Before my sister could call into TVU ’s Most Wanted Countdown to yell her vote on the phone: “I’m calling to vote for Sixpence None the Richer because they’re smooth like me!”— which host David thought sounded like “rude like me” only to be corrected by the offscreen engineer who correctly heard “smooth like me”—before any of that could happen, the band had to be pressured for a hit from their 2002 al

Producer Reanna Cruz of the Switched On Pop podcast pointed out a song that was huge this summer in America, but only for a certain demographic. The song was a massive comeback by the fifty-five-year-old Australian singer Kylie Minogue who had hits in America in the late ‘80s and the early ‘00s. Last month, I covered the second single, “ Hold on to Now ,” from her sixteenth studio album Tension , but today it’s time to get a little campy and just focus on the beating of the heart and the effect music has on that heartbeat when dancing in the club as Kylie invites us in the lead single “ Padam Padam .”   I HEAR IT AND I KNOW. After a disco era, Kylie Minogue tapped into current sounds with producer LOSTBOY to craft a perfect comeback record that harkens back to her biggest hit, “ Can’t Get You Outta My Head .” “Padam Padam” is lyrically simple and straightforward. It’s a club anthem about trying to get lucky. It’s a song by a cis-gender, presumably straight woman with a hell of a lo

  It was a rainy summer break during my Freshman year of college. I was still driving my '91 Toyota Corolla, and that was the summer that I binged the first three  Copeland  albums. It started with 2003's  Beneath Medicine Tree ,  the indie/rock concept album about love and loss. About a month later I bought, 2005's  In Motion ,  which was a little more musically diverse. The next year's  Eat, Sleep, Repeat ,  was closer to musical theater than rock. Each Copeland album had its own unique mood. Today's song, " Coffee ," comes from  Beneath Medicine Tree,  which is the most immature of the Copeland albums. Lyricist and singer  Aaron Marsh  was fine-tuning his craft at writing sappy love songs, and this album's lyrics tended to be a little too over the top. The song " Coffee " appears as track 9, with a story as cliche as they get--two small-town kids falling in love while talking all night at the diner. The brief brush drum solo toward the end

  Conan Gray released his debut album, Kid Krow , in 2020. The album entered Billboard’s 200 Album chart at number 5, the highest position for a debut artist in 2020. But artists with such a successful debut rarely come out of nowhere. Gray began uploading his songs to YouTube in 2013 when he was 15. His channel gained many followers for his vlogs about everyday life growing up in Texas; however, eventually he began writing and recording music in 2017. I STILL REMEMBER THE THIRD OF DECEMBER. California-born and Texas-raised on a musical diet of Taylor Swift , Lorde , and Lana Del Rey , Teen Vogue called Conan Gray “the pop prince for sad internet teens.” Republic Records signed Gray based on his online presence and the streaming success of his early singles. The singer performed on Late Night with Seth Meyers in 2019 and later opened for Panic! at the Disco’ Pray for the Wicked Tour on a few dates. Kid Krow was promoted by two singles: “ Maniac ,” which “bubbled under the Hot 10

Today we're listening to a few alternate versions of some groups we have heard in this blog. It's short and eclectic, but will serve as a list to grow for later. Acoustic for the meaning of this playlist is loose. The instrumentation may be altered, re-recorded. In the case of the Demon Hunter song, " Dead Flowers" (Resurrected) , the band recorded the '80s-styled power metal ballad with strings, without an electric guitar solo, and with bagpipes at the end. Enjoy the mix!